Jan 30, 2008 - Claremont, Calif. - Bill Nye will be the speaker at Harvey Mudd College's commencement ceremony, which will be held in Mudd Quadrangle on Sunday, May 18, at 1:30 p.m.
 
Best known as “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” from the multi-award-winning television program of the same name, Nye is a scientist, engineer, comedian, author and inventor. He defines his mission as helping to foster a scientifically literate society and helping people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. 
 
Nye earned his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering at Cornell University and after graduation worked as an engineer at Boeing in Seattle, Wash. In Seattle, he began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. 
 
Eventually, he quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a mid-morning-to-late-at-night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle’s home-grown ensemble comedy show, where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle’s NBC affiliate.

While working on the Science Guy program, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing and producing, and the program won 28 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote four kids’ books about science. His fifth book, “Bill Nye’s Great Big Book of Tiny Germs” was published in 2005. Nye is the host of two currently-running television series: "The 100 Greatest Discoveries” airs on the Science Channel, and “The Eyes of Nye,” which airs on PBS stations across the country.
 
Nye remains a licensed mechanical engineer in the state of Washington and has two patents on educational products: a magnifier made of water and an abacus that does arithmetic like a computer. An occasional athlete, Nye has a patent pending on a device to help people learn to throw a baseball better and his next patent is an improved toe shoe for ballerinas.
 
From 2001 to 2004, Nye was the Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 University Professor at Cornell University. He In addition to his B.S. from Cornell, Nye holds honorary doctorate degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Goucher College.